by Dick Francis
John Chester had been doing his sums, and the prize money of the Cloister Hurdle would put him into leading position on the stakes-won trainers’ list. The big prizes were sparse at that time of year, as the main part of the jumping season was over: the very last was on the following day, Saturday, but Percy Driffield had no suitable runners. With luck John Chester could win the Cloister and stay ahead of Percy Driffield for the few weeks that were left.
John Chester ached to be leading trainer, and to humble Percy Driffield.
‘Find a way,’ he told his jockey, ‘of beating that bugger Lilyglit. He must have a weak spot somewhere.’
Moggie Reilly knew all about Lilyglit, having followed the bright chestnut twice past the winning post on other occasions. He doubted that Storm Cone would ever beat Lilyglit, but had more tact than to say so. He ate dry toast to keep his weight down and let John Chester’s wishful thinking roll over his head.
*
Sarah Driffield drove Moggie Reilly’s car back to park it outside The Stag, as he’d asked, and hid its key out of sight in a magnetic box.
As it was daylight she took the shorter path home across fields that she had shunned the previous midnight, and was sitting in the kitchen, showered, changed and eating breakfast when her father returned from seeing his horses gallop.
Percy Driffield, shedding jacket and helmet, merely asked if she’d had a good time at the birthday party.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she answered. ‘Moggie Reilly very kindly-drove me home.’
Her father frowned. ‘Don’t encourage him.’
‘No.’
Tequila Slammer, she thought. A pinch of salt on the tongue, toss back a jigger of neat tequila, suck a slice of lime. She had felt liberated. Sleeping with Moggie Reilly had become a fun and ‘why not?’ thing to do. She searched her conscience for guilt and came up with only a smile.
Percy Driffield talked compulsively about Lilyglit. ‘Damn fool owner wants to sell him. I’ve told him he needs to insure him, but he keeps putting it off. Why don’t very rich people insure things? Valuations invite crooks, he says. Jasper Billington Innes, nice enough, but daft. You’ve met him often, of course. I told him Lilyglit is a Champion Hurdle prospect, given another year. I can’t think what’s got into the man. He sounded panic-stricken on the phone yesterday evening, telling me to find a buyer at once. At least wait until after he wins the Cloister Hurdle, I said, but he’s afraid of Storm Cone, at better weights in the handicap. He seemed to think I could make some sort of suggestion to Storm Cone’s jockey. Not a chance. I told him to try it himself.’
His daughter raised her eyebrows over her cornflakes. If Moggie took a bribe she had finished with him, she thought.
*
Moggie ‘the cat’ Reilly, like many other jockeys, kept fit by regular running, and many, also, left their cars outside the pubs at night rather than be done for drink-driving, so no one paid any attention when Moggie jogged to The Stag, plucked his keys from their magnetic box and drove himself home.
When he walked through his door, the telephone began ringing: he picked up the receiver hoping the call would be short. He felt chilled, the warm jog ebbing. He wanted a hot shower and to sit in a warm woollen lumberjack sweater while he drank more coffee and read the newspapers.
A. high nervous hurried voice in his ear said, ‘I want to speak to Reilly. It’s Billington Innes here. Jasper… er… Billington Innes. I own Lilyglit… er… do you know who I mean?’
Moggie Reilly knew well. He said he was Reilly.
Yes. Well… er… I’m selling my horse.’ Billington Innes took a slow deep breath and tried to speak more slowly. ‘I’ve arranged a sale… top price of course… really an excellent sale…’
Moggie Reilly said briefly, ‘Congratulations.’
‘Yes, but, well, do you see, it’s a conditional sale.’
‘Mm?’ Moggie Reilly murmured, ‘Conditional on whatV
‘Well… actually, conditional on his winning this afternoon. Winning the Cloister Hurdle, to be precise…’
‘I see,’ Moggie said with calm, and indeed he did see.
Yes… well, Percy Driffield refused to approach you with this proposition, but…’ he spoke faster, ‘this is not a bribe I’m offering you, not at all. I wouldn’t do that, absolutely not.’
‘No,’ Moggie said.
‘What I’m offering, do you see,’ Jasper Billington Innes continued, coming awkwardly to the point, ‘is in the nature of commission. If my horse Lilyglit wins the Cloister Hurdle, I can finalise the sale on better terms, and… er, well, if you and Storm Cone could have assisted the result in any way, then you would have earned a commission, don’t you see?’
What I see, Moggie Reilly thought to himself, is a quick way to lose my licence. To Jasper Billington Innes he replied reassuringly, ‘Your horse Lilyglit is good enough to win without help.’
‘But think of the handicap. It alters everything. And last time out Lilyglit at level weights beat Storm Cone by only two lengths…’ The voice rose in worry.
‘Mr Billington Innes,’ Moggie Reilly said patiently, near to shivering, ‘there are eleven runners in the Cloister. Theoretically it’s anybody’s race because of the handicap, and if Storm Cone makes his way to the front, I shan’t stop him.’
‘Are you saying you won’t help me?’
‘I’m saying good luck.’
The phone went dead abruptly. Jasper Billington Innes, thought Moggie Reilly, as he headed, undressing, for the shower, was one of the last people he’d have expected to aim to win by flim-flam.
Moggie didn’t know, of course, about the manager at Stemmer Peabody.
Jasper Billington Innes sat beside the telephone, staring unseeingly at the carpet of a small hotel bedroom next door to his gaming club. The deal he had made with his bookmaker and the club proprietors no longer seemed so brilliant as at four in the morning, but he had to admit that they’d been fair and even kind. He’d realised too late, though, that Lilyglit had to win the Cloister Hurdle for him to be left with enough to hold up his head around town. In effect, if Lilyglit won, the prize money would go a long way towards paying his gambling debts. Lilyglit’s value would have risen and his sale would leave a useful surplus. If Lilyglit lost, his sale proceeds would be swallowed by debt. If he lost the race he would be worth less than he would fetch at that moment. His hard-pressed owner had agreed that the horse’s value should decline slightly with every length he was beaten.
Jasper saw betting on Lilyglit to win as a way out, but his bookmaker had shaken his head and refused to increase his debt.
Jasper Innes made a hopeless list of his other saleable assets, none of which were unentailed antiques or portraits. He and Wendy had both from childhood lived among precious objects that belonged for ever to the next generation. Even his old house, dying of rot, belonged to his son and his son and his son, for ever.
Jasper Billington Innes, until that morning, would never have tried to bribe a jockey. He was only vaguely aware of the graceful manner of Moggie’s refusal, and he could think of nothing except his own desolation.
He read again the newspaper assessment of the Cloister Hurdle that lay before him on his room-service breakfast tray.
No. 1 Lilyglit. Worthy favourite, needing to fight all the way with top weight.
No. 2 Fable. In the good strong hands of Arkwright, will he or won’t he be able to come and join the dance?
No. 3 Storm Cone. Jockey, ‘Nine lives’ M. Reilly. They’ll try forever, and the weights favour them, but have they the finishing speed?
Jasper swallowed hard and telephoned a friend who would know how to get in touch with the Arkwrights. He then reached and talked to Vernon Arkwright, who listened without excitement.
Jasper found it easier, the second time, to offer a ‘commission’. He almost believed in it himself.
‘What you want me to do,’ Vernon said, clarifying things baldly, ‘is to prevent Storm Cone from beating Lilyglit.’
‘And I don’t get paid unless Lilyglit wins and I’ve in some way helped to bring that about. Is that right?’
‘Er… yes.’
Vernon Arkwright sighed. It wasn’t much of a proposition, but the only one they’d been offered.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ll do it. But if you default on the agreement, I’ll report your offer to the stewards.’
Jasper wasn’t used to threats. Vernon Arkwright’s bluntness forced him to understand how far he’d travelled towards plain dishonesty. He felt humiliated and wretched. He wavered. He didn’t turn back.
He telephoned Percy Driffield and asked him to place a big bet for him on Lilyglit to win. Driffield, who had done this before, agreed without protest and telephoned his own bookmaker, who accepted the wager.
Christopher Haig, sitting at his table in the weighing-room, smiled at each jockey as he checked colours and number cloth.
Lilyglit, the favourite, was to be ridden as usual by the longtime champion steeplechase jockey: married, three children, a face well known to the public. Trainer Percy Driffield stood by, alert in case of trouble.
Next on the judge’s list came Vernon Arkwright, partner of Fable. Vernon Arkwright, though a villain from eyeballs to spleen, nevertheless amused Christopher Haig who fought to keep his grin within officially suitable limits. The stewards in Christopher Haig’s hearing had sworn to follow Fable every step of the way in the Cloister Hurdle with sword-sharp patrol camera lenses, trying to catch him in crime. Chris Haig thought of warning the jockey but, looking at Arkwright’s cheeky confidence, thought he probably knew.
Storm Cone’s jockey next. Moggie the cat, second generation Irish, agile in body, clever in mind, a honey trap for good-looking women and quite likely a future ambassador for the sport.
When he’d learned and checked off all the runners, Christopher Haig stood in the parade ring for a final familiarisation and watched the jockeys go out to race; watched them – young, thin and careless of danger – and envied them sorely. What if, he thought, what if I’d gone to a racing stable at sixteen, instead of school and university? What if it’s still not too late to learn stunt flying? To try wing-walking?
But it was already too late for both.
The judge’s box at Winchester races was situated in the main part of the grandstand, a storey above the stewards’ room and (of course) directly in line with the winning post.
On some tracks, particularly minor country ones, the judge’s box was down on the grass, itself marking the finishing line, but Christopher Haig preferred the height of places like Winchester, where one could look down on the course and distinguish more easily one speeding horse from another.
He climbed to his vantage point for the Cloister Hurdle and laid out his notes on the shelf thoughtfully provided by the window for the purpose. He had binoculars for watching the more distant parts of the mile-and-a-half circuit and an assistant whose job it was to announce ‘Photograph, photograph’ over the loudspeaker if the judge told him to: and the judge told him to whenever the leading horses finished within half a length of each other. The photo-finish camera at Winchester was operated by technicians in a room above the judge’s box.
Christopher Haig counted the horses as they cantered to the start: eleven, all correct. Through his binoculars he watched the horses circle and line up for the start. Lilyglit lined up on the inside rail and, when the starting tapes flew up, was effortlessly first and fast away.
Percy Driffield with Sarah beside him watched Lilyglit from the stands. Neither Jasper Billington Innes nor Wendy had found enough courage to appear on the racecourse. Driffield hoped Moggie Reilly would prove as honest as his reputation: his daughter pledged her life on it.
Wendy sat at home in front of the television set in her small private sitting-room with her fists clenched, her hair unbrushed and tear stains on her cheeks. Jasper hadn’t telephoned her and she didn’t know where he was. She had tried the bookmakers, the gaming club and the hotel. She had tried the telephone in his car. Jasper had left no messages anywhere and his wife was becoming afraid.
Lilyglit, always a front runner, sped over the first few flights of hurdles defying gravity like an impala fleeing a lion. Storm Cone lay fifth, with Fable behind him.
On the stands the Arkwrights – trainer and owner-cousin -cheerfully watched young Vernon set off in Moggie Reilly’s shadow with the secretly stated purpose of ending Storm Cone’s chances by flipping his jockey over the rails. With Storm Cone out of the way, Lilyglit had the best chance to win. Vernon Arkwright had no intention of letting anything else interfere with Lilyglit’s progress – except that if Fable himself should take unexpected wings… well then… allegiance to the prize money began at home.
Storm Cone’s owner with John Chester, his trainer, stood on the balcony of the owner’s private box up on the same level as the stewards’ eyrie, with no one to interfere with their view. The owner, almost as rich as Jasper had been a few days earlier, had been trying for several years to buy himself into leading-owner status, but he, as so many before him, had found that if money can’t buy love, neither can it lead in the winner of the Grand National.
John Chester had put all his skill into sending Storm Cone to this test with every piston smoothly firing. If Moggie Reilly gave away an unnecessary inch, and he, John Chester, lost his best and perhaps only chance of heading the trainers’ list, he thought he would probably kill him.
Down on the turf emotions were simpler. To the champion jockey, comfortable on his regular partner, Lilyglit, it was just another race, which he would win if all went well. He liked front-runners. Lilyglit jumped the hurdles cleanly.
To Moggie Reilly also, it was just another race, though he would strain to give John Chester his championship if Lilyglit blinked. Storm Cone telegraphed vigour and good feeling through the reins, the best of signs for his rider
The eleven runners stretched out past the stands first time round, and swung round the top bend to set out on the last mile. Christopher Haig watched them, counted them, checked that Lilyglit still led on the inside.
It was on the curve at the top of the long bend, where the horses were backside-on to the stewards and half hidden by white rails, that Vernon Arkwright put his hand under Moggie Reilly’s boot and heaved upwards with all his strength.
Moggie Reilly, fiercely unbalanced, felt his foot fly out of the stirrup as his head swung inexorably over the horse’s withers and down towards the thundering shoulder and the ground below. Moggie’s fingers locked in the horse’s mane. His weight was all on one side of the great creature surging beneath him. He had dropped his whip. There was a flight of hurdles ahead, as soon as one got round the bend.
Vernon Arkwright couldn’t believe that Moggie Reilly was still technically in the saddle, even though clinging there with his fingernails and with his centre of gravity a yard off sideways. Moggie the cat let Storm Cone put himself as right as possible to jump the hurdle ahead, and fatalistically accepted that he would probably be thrown off into the path of the other half-ton runners, all striving to hold their positions at thirty miles an hour.
He said afterwards that it was an acute fear of falling among hooves that kept him bumping along round Storm Cone’s neck, hanging on literally for life, forcing every muscle he could command to avoid being trampled. Ten strides, not more, before he reached the lethal row of wood-and-birch lattice jumps ahead, a hand stretched down, grasped the bright nylon cloth of his scarlet-and-orange striped shirt, and hauled him upwards.
Moggie Reilly’s heroic saviour, partnering one of the eventual also-rans, shrugged off his action later with, ‘You’d have done it for me, mate’. What he did at the time was to give Moggie Reilly precious seconds in which to grasp the saddle-tree, throw his legs astride Storm Cone and lurch into some sort of equilibrium before his mount bunched his quarters and shot over the hazardous hurdles as if powered by rockets.
Moggie Reilly had no hands on the reins
nor feet in the stirrups, but his will to win persisted. Storm Cone had lost maybe ten lengths behind Lilyglit, but both the horse and his rider, not ready for defeat, flattened their aerodynamic profile and accelerated determinedly down the far side. Moggie collected and shortened the reins, the horse grateful for the control. Round the final bend they raced resolutely into clear second place, with only Lilyglit still there to beat.
Vernon Arkwright cursed hugely, seeing no hope of catching Storm Cone again for another attack. Up in the stewards’ box, the three eminent gentlemen there were clapping each other on the shoulder and almost hopping around with joy. They had all plainly seen Vernon Arkwright’s attack on Moggie Reilly, bottom-end on or not. The patrol camera would have filmed it, and wouldn’t lie. This time, this time, they had caught out Vernon Arkwright in a thoroughly visible misdemeanor, and they would hold another enquiry, and this time shunt the villain off.
Christopher Haig, one storey above them, marvelled that Moggie Reilly, without his feet in the stirrups, was still on board at all, even though, with Lilyglit well ahead coming to the final hurdle, he had no hope of winning. Tiring, indeed, Storm Cone would find it difficult, Chris Haig thought from his long judging experience, to hang on to finish second. Two horses he had passed were closing on him again.
That clear assessment was Christopher Haig’s last coherent thought.
He saw Lilyglit approach the final flight of hurdles. He saw the horse make a rare mistake in taking off too soon to reach the far side without stumbling. He saw Lilyglit’s nose go down in the classic pattern of fallers… and before Lilyglit had crashed to the ground at high speed, his own heart had stopped.
The judge’s assistant had no medical knowledge and was hardly a fast thinker on his feet. When Christopher Haig collapsed beside him into a graceless sprawled-leg heap on the floor, the assistant bent over him in horror and didn’t know what to do.
He’d heard Chris Haig’s head crunch onto the floorboards of the judge’s box, and he heard also the brief rattle of the last lungful of air escaping. He saw Chris Haig’s face flush suddenly to a greyish dark blue. He saw the dark colour vanish and the skin fade to white. He loosened Christopher Haig’s adventurous tie in shaking shock and several times called his name.